ART. I.-On the Power, Wisdom, and Goodness of God, as manifested in the Creation of Animals, and in their History, Habits, and Instincts. By WILLIAM KIRBY, M. A. F. R. S. &c. 2 vols. London: Pickering. 1835.
We look upon this Treatise as a suitable companion to Dr. Roget's. It is reasonable to expect, however, that this work, which considers the history, habits, and instincts of animals, must sometimes treat of the same subjects that came to be handled by the former writer, in his able production on Animal and Vegetable Physiology, especially as both works are intended to illustrate the power, wisdom, and goodness of God, as manifested in the creation. For "the history, habits, and instincts of animals are so intimately connected with their physiological structure, especially their external anatomy, that it is scarcely possible, in order to prove the adaptation of means to an end, to treat satisfactorily of the former without occasional illustrations from the latter." Our author's thorough conviction of this circumstance, which is thus so explicitly declared, must, we should think, have satisfied him, that in these said Bridgewater Treatises, there is something not a little clumsy in their plan, and that by some other arrangement, and at the hand of fewer labourers, the attributes of the Supreme Being, as manifested in the creation, might have been, in a much smaller and compact order, illustrated by all reasonable arguments. As it is, we have expensive and elaborate works, and such as bear on their general conduct the impress of much effort. Each and all of them that we have seen give evidence of more or less talent; but they equally at the same time exhibit the writers as straining after extraordinary effect, where the easy flow of conviction is frequently overloaded by wire-drawn and by no means powerful arguments. The present publication, for example, even although taken by itself, without knowing that it at times traverses the same path that some or several of its relatives in the Bridgewater family have done, will be found to run into minutiæ, to the weakening of the general doctrine maintained; and we have here and there met with illustrations that were ridiculous, from the nature of our preVOL. 111. (1835.) No. 1.